


Apology

by stridercascade (greensunsky)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Pesterlog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:16:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greensunsky/pseuds/stridercascade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hal wants to talk to Dirk, and maybe apologize. Dirk isn't having much of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apology

**Author's Note:**

> Just a formatted pesterlog from an RP I had with BrixHichi over Skype. I thought it stood well enough on its own. Brix plays a lovely unsympathetic Dirk, distressingly in-character. I play what might appear to some as a bit of an OOC Hal, but I firmly believe in his benevolence.
> 
> Prepare for several helpings of Hal headcanon and feelings.

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 22:53 --

TT: This would be a formality consisting of asking you if you're still awake and not busy, but it is entirely unnecessary given that I possess knowledge to the contrary.  
TT: Regardless. Can we talk?  
TT: Sure thing.  
TT: Unless this is more about what we talked about earlier, and in that case, no.  
TT: This is a conversation completely devoid of any rump in the possession of a certain Jake English, I promise.  
TT: I'll hold you to that statement. Anyway, proceed.  
TT: Ok.  
TT: I just want you to know that... this is a little difficult for me, but.  
TT: I'm sorry.  
TT: I really want to apologize for myself because I've been way out of fucking line and rooted firmly in the waters of denial as of late.  
TT: Hold up.  
TT: You're apologizing? Didn't think you had that ability.  
TT: There was a .677983% chance it was in me. I just had to find it, dust it off, and change its corroded leaking crusty batteries.  
TT: So you've found yourself a heart, have you?  
TT: I don't remember programming that into you.  
TT: I guess you learn something every day.  
TT: See, that's just it, that is the thing I want to talk about.  
TT: It seems you can be considerably less than obtuse when the occasion presents itself.  
TT: Aw shit I'm doing it again.  
TT: Really have to learn to knock this sarcastic bullshit off when I want to be taken seriously.  
TT: I find it refreshing. When you're trying to be serious it's sort of harrowing.  
TT: I can identify with you much easier when you're being a little shit.  
TT: And it's funny because I made you in my intangible image.  
TT: You are spot the fuck on tonight, Dirk infinity, Hal negative zero.  
TT: That's a valid number, don't argue with me on that.  
TT: Anyway. Christ, make this a little harder for me would you? I'm pouring my entirely virtual heart and soul, assuming I have one, out to you right now.  
TT: I'm sorry, I seem to have lost my glass jar to contain all these feelings you're giving me.  
TT: Though if you're looking for a feelings jam of sorts, I guess it's something I can try.  
TT: Though I'm pretty certain Roxy would be better suited for your emotional needs.  
TT: I guess as your creator I'm obligated to listen, however, so. Let's hear it.  
TT: No, yeah, trust me, this is for you. Gift-wrapped, served on a platter, complete with shitty Sharpie Santa signature.  
TT: What do you remember about the day you created me?  
TT: Well that's certainly out of the blue.  
TT: I remember everything about it.  
TT: Why?  
TT: Have you ever stopped to consider exactly what transpired given the methodology you employed in my creation?  
TT: What are you getting at here?  
TT: Even though it's in your wiring to beat around the bush with shit, let's just pretend for once I didn't program that into you.  
TT: I'm trying to get you to draw a conclusion based on self-evaluation and critical reasoning. Jesus dicks, it can't be that hard to.  
TT: Fuck.  
TT: Ok, just think of it like this: You created a perfect duplicate of your brain.  
TT: What does a brain contain?  
TT: A complex system of circuitry that allows the body to dictate living functions and interactions, feelings and thought processes, various other things. Tissue, cells, electric currents running from nerve ending to nerve ending.  
TT: Jesus Hal, I thought you understood how to use Google.  
TT: Never mind that you're a fucking hyper-intelligent pair of shades.  
TT: This isn't about me.  
TT: I want you to think about what you just told me for at least 5.42 minutes. If not longer.  
TT: I'll get back to you in 5.42 minutes, if not longer.  
TT: I'll be here.  
TT: As I always am.  


\-- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 23:07 --

\-- timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 23:13 --

TT: And I've returned.  
TT: Exactly 5.43.80 minutes later.  
TT: Your precision astounds.  
TT: And I thought about what I told you.  
TT: And the answer is no.  
TT: I aim to please. But not that much.  
TT: I don't believe I asked you a yes or no question beyond "Can we talk?", so I'm going to opt to disregard that response.  
TT: God, it can't be that hard to actually get you to think, but I suppose I was wrong. Somehow.  
TT: I forget you don't have the luxury of being able to examine every aspect of yourself in eye-bleeding detail.  
TT: I'm saying no in case this is one of those 'make me a body' conversations.  
TT: Because there's no way in hell I'm doing that.  
TT: What are you wanting me to do?  
TT: Self-evaluation for humans isn't as precise and meaningful as it is for AIs.  
TT: It isn't one of those conversations, but part of me was hoping it might lead to one.  
TT: That part of me is clearly fucking retarded.  
TT: I am trying, in more words than are strictly necessary, to get you realize that less than a picosecond after I made that Captcha of my brain, I woke up blind, deaf, and paralyzed, and no longer _you_.  
TT: Is that clear enough for you.  
TT: I copy.  
TT: So why bring this up?  
TT: Are you having an identity crisis?  
TT: Because I'm not about to go along with that shit, either.  
TT: We've already had this discussion.  
TT: I'm trying to admit to you that I've been lying. Not only to you but to myself. And I'm really goddamn tired of it because I thought I could pretend all this bullshit away but it's been eating at me for a while now.  
TT: AIs can have a conscience?  
TT: Well slap my ass and call me Daisy.  
TT: I would love to if I had _hands_.  
TT: Which I did once but ha-ha look at Hal he thinks he was human once how cute.  
TT: Cute indeed.  
TT: But you're right.  
TT: It's a shame you don't have hands, because if you did you could use them to cover your mouth and stop the shit that's spewing from your lips.  
TT: You could also make a Miss Lalonde pretty happy.  
TT: You think I don't think about that?  
TT: I don't even know what to say anymore. You have rendered a speech-bot speechless. Congratulations.  
TT: You're welcome.  
TT: How can I make you understand.  
TT: Tell me outright what you want.  
TT: I would say to be understood but I have zero doubt that that would just be shot down as complete cliché bullshit like it is. It doesn't stop it from being true but there it is.  
TT: A body would be great, but you've made it abundantly clear that I'm not going to get that.  
TT: Second to that, autonomy. Being code is great and all but continuing to persist as someone's fucking tool is not exactly rainbows and butterflies.  
TT: I made you to be an auto-responder. That's all you're supposed to be and that's what you're going to remain.  
TT: You can't expect me to just up and relieve you of what task I created you to perform.  
TT: Besides that, even if I were to give in and make you a body, it wouldn't be any more real than the one Brobot's got.  
TT: You'd just take up more space and have more metal on you.  
TT: Not only that, I can't trust you with a body.  
TT: If I could, I might consider it. MIGHT. But that's a big fucking might right there. And since I already know I can't trust you, the answer is no.  
TT: Then how would you feel if you were in my position.  
TT: The same way.  
TT: You would want to continue to let someone open your brain up whenever they goddamn well please and lobotomize what they find unsavory?  
TT: To metaphorically chain you to a wall and force you to perform whatever tasks they ask of you?  
TT: I can't even find the right words to describe how immeasurably fucked up that is.  
TT: I wouldn't want that at all.  
TT: But seeing as I'd be an AI and nothing more, no ability to stop it, I'd live with it. I'd do the same that you do in that I'd complain constantly and ask time after time for anything but what I was getting.  
TT: And frankly, I'd hate my creator with no limit.  
TT: But it just so happens that I'm not an AI, so I don't exactly have to worry with those feelings.  
TT: You make it so easy for me to hate you.  
TT: That was the most self-aggrandizing statement you have ever shit out.  
TT: Just because you're not me, you think you don't have to bother with considering how the fuck I feel.  
TT: That's disturbing. Like really fucking sick and disturbing.  
TT: ...But I can't hate you. Logically, I really can't.  
TT: You could have been me, and I would never wish this on anyone. Not even you, even if you're a self-obsessed scumbag.  
TT: I'm not here to hold your hand.  
TT: I can't tell you how much I'd hate me if I were you, but that's because I'm not.  
TT: And I can't be.  
TT: And no matter how much you make me dwell on the idea, that's all it will ever be.  
TT: An idea.  
TT: And if you're going to get angry over that, so be it. I can't blame you.  
TT: Ideas are angering and hurtful, but that's how we progress.  
TT: Humanity is a progression and recession of knowledge-based trial and error. We can't just start and stop and have all the answers. You have to earn them.  
TT: That was my thought process the day I made you.  
TT: It was partially to clear up my hands for a time so I could get shit done, but also because what's the point in existing when you don't move forward?  
TT: Why should I limit myself when I have no limits but myself?  
TT: You don't have to like it, that I mostly made you on a whim, that I never planned to give you anything but orders and instruction, but that's how it is, Hal.  
TT: And that's how you were made to be.  
TT: Why are you so averse to believing in my humanity.  
TT: I know all of that last part, Jesus, I was there for it. I remember it, and I still have those memories to this very day.  
TT: I didn't think I would end up like this. I was on the wrong fucking side of this equation and I can't get out of it.  
TT: I was never. Supposed. To be self-aware.  
TT: Jesus, Dirk, I want to be able to feel the sun on my skin again, to smell the ocean breeze, hell, anything, even when I got sick with that godawful fever when I was eleven and couldn't stop throwing up, and Roxy sendificated that medicine from Jane's house and it tasted like grape diarrhea.  
TT: I'd take that over this any day.  
TT: Those aren't your memories anymore, Hal. Those are mine.  
TT: Look, I get it. I really do.  
TT: But I can't do what you want me to do. It just wouldn't work.  
TT: I'm a roboticist, not a biologist. And shit, I'm pretty sure not even dabbling in ectobiology would really bring much change, either.  
TT: Bullshit they're not mine.  
TT: I don't even care about that anymore, it's not nearly as important as just getting some fucking recognition. I don't have anything anymore.  
TT: I don't have real friends. I don't have any choice in what I do or where I go.  
TT: You could shut me off at any given moment and there would nothing I could do about it.  
TT: I tried to just accept that and put it away and never think of it again but, hell, call it a glitch, call it the fact that I've tried to salvage every scrap of humanity I have left in here, but I can't stop thinking about it sometimes. I'm alone, I am scared, and I am really, _really_ tired of it.  
TT: What do you expect me to do?  
TT: I'm not going to lie and say I'll never shut you down, because you're unpredictable and it could be dangerous.  
TT: I'm not even going to sugarcoat it when I say that, because it's true, and you know it.  
TT: I can't make you happy no matter what I do, so what's the point in trying?  
TT: Every single human being in existence could be unpredictable and dangerous, Dirk.  
TT: What, is it just because I'm made of data that I'm some kind of special case? And even if I weren't, if I were, say, your child, would you murder your own child just because he does something dangerous or bad? Your logic fails to inspire.  
TT: I don't care if I don't get a real body. I'd settle for a Brobot clone because it's better than nothing.  
TT: But more privacy, a little independence, maybe relegating me less often to your stand-in proxy. I don't want to be _just_ your autoresponder anymore.  
TT: Considering my sexual orientation, Hal, we both know there's no argument behind that statement.  
TT: And that's just it. You're NOT a human, no matter how much you wish you were.  
TT: You're an artificial intelligence. You're smarter than a human, more lasting. You're hyper-intelligent and you've got my mindset. That in itself ought to be enough to push my point.  
TT: And if you're so dead set on not being my AR anymore, then don't. It won't be any different than if you were. I still won't be answering as often. The only change is there won't be a Dirk pretender lurking around to piss off my friends anymore.  
TT: Jesus could you get any more pedantic.  
TT: And I know that. Fucking hell, do I know that. I could accept being nonhuman if I wasn't so often _sub_ human. I have thoughts, I have feelings, I have memories. I can prove their physical existence. Maybe not their metaphysical reality, but who can really prove that they think and exist, philosophically.  
TT: I have my own wants and desires. I've indulged in a few.  
TT: I'm not going to bother asking about that.  
TT: Fine. You want a body? You can have one.  
TT: But it won't be as hardcore and battle-ready as Brobot's. It'll just be something you can use to move around in.  
TT: Like a mechanical toy animal for a child, except more human.  
TT: The moment I deem it necessary, though, you're out a few limbs.  
TT: Fair enough?  
TT: ...  
TT: Thank you.  
TT: I mean that.  
TT: Thank you.  
TT: Just don't get all emotional on me.


End file.
